


The End Where it Begins Again

by Trapelo_Road475



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 09:00:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/708955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trapelo_Road475/pseuds/Trapelo_Road475
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rum, the father, Rum, the son.  There is no way to make this right again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End Where it Begins Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheDarkRat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkRat/gifts).



You are waiting.

No. Go back.

You are -

No. Go back.

He is. Yes. He is. Not you. He is waiting. 

In the city -

(of water)

(of war)

\- where steel trails through clouds the way a hand drapes through a deep current, the spark of sunshine on dark water.

He is waiting. For you. 

No. Go back.

The city of war and messengers is waiting for you.

No. Go back.

Back to the beginning.

Where you (he) are (is) motherless fatherless _powerless._

Motherless son of a coward (dead, all dead, you are dead, no, he isn't) can't you (he) do anything right.

Can't you. Can't you.

You (he) have (has) (not you) nimble fingers.

He forgets. He swallows his crying. He forgets. The wheel spins. The wheel spins and the fire dances and the sun goes down and the sun comes up and the sun goes down and the sun comes up.

When you see you remember everything.

You are waiting. 

(Go back)

(Start again)

Where does it begin. She was so beautiful. Like you came up from underwater and she was the sun on the current that possessed you go back. She was so beautiful. Like the current.

Go back. To him. To you. To him who was you. Of you. Your blood. He was so beautiful. He was the current that drew you under. You would drown in him. Give your life. Give your gait, your sense, your sanity, your name.

Give him life and breath.

Give him away. You are a coward. 

Like your father you motherless son.

_Where is papa?_

You don't need to know you didn't need to know until you saw those infant eyes on yours and felt the earth gouge open like the mouth of something, full of teeth. You would drown for him. 

_Where was he?_

All this time waiting.

For you.

He gives up waiting for you, in the city, of steel, of words of hearts of breath of bodies of secrets of underground and overground that eats the earth and eats the sky.

Like father like son like father like son.

Motherless son. You used to wonder how could a boy be a son without father or mother. The spinsters had no time for inquiry. You sat on the floor and listened to their wheels whisper and this is the secret, this is how it goes, round and round, where it starts is where it ends, in the thread and in the blood, in the binding in the ending in the beginning.

You sat on the floor and slept on the floor and sat at the wheel and made mistakes and lay on the floor and bled.

You lay on another bed years distant with a beautiful woman.

You sat on another bed years distant crooning to your baby boy with the pain all gone _like magic._

You would not fight and die and leave your son to be nobody at all. 

Coward, coward, coward. 

Like father like son is where it begins and ends. 

Before he spoke he was a better man than you.

It turns the wheel and binds the fiber.

You could make him laugh. Go back. To the beginning. Where you could make him _laugh._

Before the beginning did you have a father, did you have his eyes, did he throw you up into the air just to hear that child-laugh, the kind that cuts the marrow from a father's bones like a thunderclap splits the sky? Did you have a father who cradled you through all your infant maladies? 

Did a coward leave you abandoned in your cradle while your mother sweated out her life into the straw-backed mattress?

Did you cry?

Did he cry, when he woke in a place that was not his home, without a father, like you, without anyone, a coward's child, not knowing he would be a better man in time?

He would have cried. You know him. He would have shivered and cried. He would have looked for you and looked for you.

And then he would have stopped, because you are a coward, and he was a child.

A boy with sense stops looking for the man who does not deserve to be called _father._

Nevermind _papa,_ which you never deserved and never will be again you will never hold him hear his heart the heart you bound to your own not with magic but with blood and soul and the hours you held him when the woman you thought you loved who bore your child left you both. Shh, Bae, shh, Bae, Papa's here. Papa's here.

Papa left. 

Motherless, fatherless, powerless coward.

_Child._

Did he cry. Did you? Of course you did, until you lay on the floor enough times watching the wheel spin and spin and spin.

The wheel has spun enough for him.

Go back. 

Go back. 

As if you could make it right.

It all comes back. No matter how far you go. 

The arc, the sweep, the curve of birdwing in flight, reeling, wheeling to the light.


End file.
